INDIANAPOLIS—There’s less than a minute left. You’re beating Indiana in Indiana, the Bankers Life Fieldhouse filled with edgy Hoosiers fans aching to see their side advance in the Big Ten Tournament.

So who’s your go-to guy?

Of course. The guy averaging 3.1 points per game. The senior averaging 3.1 points. And of course, Wisconsin guard Rob Wilson makes the 3-pointer that clinches a 79-71 victory for the Badgers and advances them to a Big Ten semifinal against co-champion Michigan State.

Here’s the thing. Wisconsin played 11 games this season in which Wilson did not score. Nothing new about that. The Badgers played lots of games in his four years in which he didn’t appear. And yet he left this game with a career-best 30 points. This might have been the most improbable story of the entire 2011-12 basketball season.

Wilson said he hadn’t had a game like this since high school. “I mean, the weight of the ball felt like it was going in today,” he said. I don’t remember that feeling in a long time.”

It’s a safe bet Wilson’s name was not prominent on Indiana’s scouting report prior to their Friday quarterfinal.

No assistant coach would write this down: In the event Wisconsin decides to reach deep into its bench and unearth a player who rarely has mattered during a four-year career but has won honors for his sportsmanship and academic work, watch out for that No. 33.

But Wilson was not ignored. The Hoosiers were warned he’d shot it well lately, but they admitted they were overly concerned with star point guard Jordan Taylor even as Wilson punished them for their inflexibility.

“We tried to put our best defenders on him, but we were overhelping,” IU junior Derek Elston said. “We were miscommunicating, overhelping, and he hit wide-open shots.”

Wilson made 7-of-10 3-point attempts and 11-of-16 from the field Friday.

Folks, he’d scored only 95 points all season, an average of 3.1 per game. He was shooting 39 percent from the field and 35 percent from 3-point range. But his ability to shoot off the bounce made him tough for Indiana to defend Friday, and his confidence shooting with a hand in his face made the good defense IU did play irrelevant.

When Wilson scored on a drive past Hoosiers wing Victor Oladipo to stop an Indiana charge with 6:27 remaining and put the Badgers up five, IU had to know it was in big trouble. He did it again on a weak-side post-up that again extended the Badgers lead to five with 2:30 left.

And then came the clincher, Wisconsin protecting a 69-65 advantage in the final minute and draining all but the final few seconds from the shot-clock. All-Big Ten guard Jordan Taylor penetrated and drew the level of attention you’d expect, but that left Wilson wide open above the left wing. His high 3-pointer dropped through the goal for a 72-65 lead with 38 seconds to play.

Wilson was held back before his junior season by a preseason hamstring injury, and that probably had been his best opportunity to make an impact. By the time he healed, freshman Josh Gasser had won the shooting guard job and held it down on a team that eventually reached the NCAA Sweet 16.

“You know, he's had some streaks on the scout team,” Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan said. “Last year we probably should have red-shirted him with the hamstring injury, but he kept battling through it. And because he couldn't do some of the things that he wanted to do, I think he withdrew internally somewhat about the aggressiveness to getting minutes and getting on the floor.

“It's a competitive world.

“So what happened was, we started talking about the clock ticking one day in the locker room, and I should have used the term sooner. But with the assistants and I talking about it, it's like ever since—and he realized, ‘Hey, yeah, this is it.’ ”

Wilson did begin to play more toward the end of this season, including an 11-point outing in Wisconsin’s loss to Iowa, when he was one of the few Hoosiers who exceeded his customary performance.

Regardless, what we saw from Wilson was nearly unprecedented.

Have you ever seen the old movie One on One? That’s the one where teen star Robbie Benson was fashioned as a hot-shot basketball recruit who wound up stuck on the bench for an entire season before shooting Western University to a big victory. OK, so it’s very old.

It’s also maybe the last time we’ve ever seen anything like what Wilson did Friday.